


Tell me now how should I feel

by Incarnam



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Mentions of Nick/others and Harry/others, POV Outsider, The London Hipster Clique, Timeline What Timeline, but over the age of consent, shifting pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-07 08:24:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Incarnam/pseuds/Incarnam
Summary: Nick and Harry through the years, from the outside, looking in





	Tell me now how should I feel

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Writcraft for running the fest and for the amazing beta-reading and creative suggestions ! This work basically wouldn't exist if it wasn't for you :)
> 
> Warnings for : mentions of Harry having sex with Nick before turning 18, shifting PoVs, wonky timelines and vague canon divergence 
> 
> All remaining mistakes are mine, and English isn't my first language  
> Title from "Blue Monday" by New Order

Out of Nick’s friends, Aimee is the one who knows the most about him and Harry. She was there from the beginning after all, from day one when her and Nick went to visit Cheryl at a taping of the X-Factor and they stumbled upon a pretty boy with curly hair and a slow smile on their way backstage. Aimee can still remember chastising Nick when she saw him come back an hour later with a fresh hickey on his neck, his quiff messier than usual - “Was he legal at least, Grim ? He looked twelve !” - after a snog and a hasty mutual handjob with the kid in a bathroom. (Nick and Aimee probably know way too many details about each-other's’ sex lives because they’re those kind of friends, the no-shame-and-no-filter ones).

 

Aimee watched the X-Factor later with Nick, teasing him every time the kid - Harry Styles, she knows now - appeared on screen. They both rooted for One Direction and made sure to text in for the voting, even opening a fancy bottle of wine when the band was eliminated. “There goes my chance of ever seeing him again.” Nick had said after a few glasses and Aimee laughed. Nick fucked pretty boys every weekend. He would find another one to obsess over and forget about the kid in no time. She filled up his glass and suggested that they call a few people to hit the clubs together.

 

It seemed Harry Styles was forgotten, until Aimee woke up one morning to find him cuddling Thurston, sitting crossed legged on the floor of Nick’s living room, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and an oversized Dr Dre t-shirt that she immediately recognised.

 

“Oh, hey … hi … I’m Harry” he said from under his mop of curls. Aimee stared at him, confused. “Is that your dog ?” He continued. “He’s very cute.”

 

“Thank you.” Aimee replied when she managed to pull herself together. What the hell was going on? One Direction had become surprisingly famous after the X-Factor, and Harry Styles was already quite the household name. Sure, living with Nick meant spending plenty of time drunk on his couch surrounded by various celebrities - watching cooking shows with Kate Moss was hilarious - but she had no idea how a teenage pop idol had ended up on the floor of the living room. Well, she had a few ideas. Most of them very graphic.

 

Nick saved her from asking more questions when he emerged from the bathroom wrapped in his dressing gown, his hair still wet from the shower. “Oh” he said when he got sight of Aimee in her underwear staring at a confused Harry. “Well, this is awkward. Aimee, meet Harry. Harry, this is Aimee Phillips. She’s American.”

 

“I know I … remember her from last time” mumbled Harry, flushing. Of course. Last time. When Harry and Nick had flirted for ten minutes before disappearing to have sex backstage of the freaking X-Factor. Aimee could never top this (or maybe she could, but the details of her epic threesome with DiCaprio and a busty blonde model were very hazy, so she was never really sure if she’d dreamt it or not).

 

They ended up having the most awkward breakfast of Aimee’s life, all three of them sat around the counter in Nick’s kitchen without saying a word. Aimee tried to look casual as she watched Harry make moon eyes at Nick from behind her mug of coffee. The boy looked a bit like an overeager puppy desperate for attention. But Nick being Nick, he intensely concentrated on the ingredient list on the back of a box of cereals to avoid facing any of his responsibilities, leaving the poor kid to his not-so-discreet pining.

 

An hour later, when they’d put a freshly-showered Harry in a cab back to wherever Simon Cowell hid his flock of pretty popstars, Aimee finally got the full story. It turned out that One Direction had been invited to the same GQ dinner asNick, and that they’d seated them at the same table. By a strange twist of fate, Nick and Harry had been reunited. They’d flirted all evening and, at the end of the event, piled into a cab back to Nick’s to have what her friend described as “messy but enthusiastic” sex while Aimee was quietly sleeping.

 

“Is this a thing now ? You and him ?” Aimee asked sprawled on the couch next to Nick, Thurston sleeping between the tangle of their legs.

 

“Well, I have his number now so … I’ll probably see him again.” Nick looked at his phone instead of Aimee.

 

“Nicholas Peter Grimshaw, are you considering dating a closeted teen heartthrob? This is very unlike you!”

 

“Aims! No one said anything about dating him! He’s nice and funny, and he’s from up North like me. I’m sure we could be good friends.” Aimee snorted in disbelief. “Okay, friends with benefits, maybe” said Nick. “But he can’t come out anyway, so no relationship. That’s much better for both of us. And he’s legal, so stop right away with the jailbait jokes,” he finished.

 

They retreated back to their comfortable silence, turning up the latest episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians playing in the background. Aimee stole glances at Nick. He was her best friend. She knew everything about him, and she hoped that the Styles boy wouldn’t be any trouble. She’d been with Nick at the worst of his heartbreak over Jonny - made even harder by the fact that she’d been the one to introduce them - and she wasn’t keen on reliving it.

 

She could never have known at that moment, the place Harry would take in Nick’s life. In her life, even. One day he was showing up for Sunday roasts at their place (well, Nick’s place) and the next thing Aimee knew Harry was friends with all of their friends, adopted by their clique. He was around for birthdays and parties and hungover mornings. They even snogged once when drunk (Aimee kind of liked it).

 

The thing between Harry and Nick was meant to stay a secret between their group of friends. Nick had told Aimee that he didn’t want unnecessary questions, so it was better for them to keep it quiet. “We just fuck sometimes, it’s no big deal anyway,” he told her. “Also, I don’t want it to be awkward for Flacky, you know?”

 

But after six months, almost every single one of their friends knew about Harry. Nick told Pixie because he tells her everything that he tells Aimee, and Pixie told  George. George didn’t care, so he didn’t tell anyone. Then Dave stumbled upon Nick on his knees with Harry’s dick in his mouth while he was going to the loo during a house party. Obviously he told Henry, who teased Nick no end about it. Gillian and Fifi found out from Henry, of course, and spent an entire weekend dropping heavy innuendos to the point that Harry was constantly bright red, Nick threatened to throttle them and eventually everyone who was around - even Jack - figured out what was going on.

 

They all knew the rule : Nick always gets bored of the pretty boys he sleeps with. Sure, he’d fallen in love and had his heart broken, but it was a rare exception. And they liked Harry, they didn’t want to have to choose between the two of them if things ever got sour. So when Harry started dating Taylor Swift, no one knew what to expect. But Nick didn’t seem bothered at all and he invited everyone - including Harry - to a lovely Christmas dinner. They acted just as they always had around each other, smiling and happy and making stupid jokes that no one else understood. The perfect picture of the best friends they were, without any apparent hard feelings. At the end of the evening, everyone snickered along with Nick when he teased Harry about country music and break-up songs.

 

And so it carried on. Harry broke up with Taylor and came back to Nick. They fucked for a bit (Aimee knew because Nick’d told her; Emily confirmed it because she stayed over and had to hear them going at it all night long). Then Harry left for tour and Nick went back to chasing models. The usual.

 

Aimee learned to stop worrying about Nick and Harry’s thing. She’d had fuck buddies in the past too, before Ian and commitment came into the picture, and everything had been fine and sexy and uncomplicated. And, hell, she knew Nick almost as well as she knew herself. If there was one thing that he was good at, it was uncomplicated, no-strings-attached sex.

 

-

 

Life in London carried on while One Direction became even bigger with every passing day. One time, Aimee found Nick and Harry snogging in the dark of Pixie’s kitchen after dinner. She stood there for a moment, not making any sound. Usually she’d have taken the piss out of them, but for once she felt like keeping quiet. Maybe it was their hands desperately clutching each-other - Harry’s tangled in the front of Nick’s shirt, Nick’s lost in the curls of Harry’s hair. Maybe it was their desperate, breathy whimpers that sounded so much to her like wordless professions of love. Maybe it was her concern for Nick’s recently bruised heart after the whole thing with Nicco went to shit. She couldn’t explain it, but she stayed in the shadow to watch over them. It was crazy, she thought, how a thing so small and mundane as the embrace of two bodies could become such an enormous scandal if the world outside their bubble of friends came to know about it. One picture of this moment could destroy both of them. She shivered, and left.

 

Later, she recounted her thoughts to Gillian while they were having brunch in Shoreditch.

 

"Nick always wants the ones he can’t have, doesn’t he ?" Aimee asked her. Gillian paused to think about it, resting her mimosa against her cheek.

 

"In a way, he does." She replied after a moment. "He wants the men he can’t have because it’s easier to love them and leave them than try for a real relationship, for something that could last. He loved Arthur because Arthur would pretend to be straight forever and never face the truth. And with Jonny and Nicco, he knew they’d leave, eventually, because of work and geography and all that."

 

Aimee looked down at her plate, half-heartedly pushing around the last of her French toast with a fork. "I’m afraid … I’m afraid he’ll end up falling in love with Harry, too."

 

"I think that they’re already in love," replied Gillian with a sad smile. "Hopefully, one day, they’ll both figure it out and deal with it like adults. We can only wait and be there for Nick if he needs us."

 

**-**

 

Aimee moved in with Ian to countless lamentations from Nick who whined about her abandoning him and forgetting about their pact of chicks before dicks. Aimee rolled her eyes at him as she finished packing up the last of her things. "You’ll be fine, Grim,” she said. “Look, you’ll have the place fully to yourself now. You can have orgies in the living room with the cast of the next Armani campaign and not worry about me walking in.”

 

"Hey ! I’m not that big of a slag !" huffed Nick in his dramatically-hurt-and-offended voice.

 

"Sure, babe. You’re not," Aimee replied absentmindedly, checking if her pink sparkly heels were properly wrapped in tissue paper before putting them in another cardboard box. They both liked sex, she could relate to that. And she did feel a little bit bad about falling in love and moving on with her life when Nick was still very much single.

 

But thankfully for Aimee’s conscience, that was when Mckenzi introduced Nick to Michael. They fit together right away, Michael’s calm and quiet complementing Nick’s constant buzz of activity. They were friends, until they weren’t, because friends who fuck sometimes shouldn’t have that many feelings for each other. So they tried a relationship.

 

Aimee watched, fascinated, her best friend turning soft and tender in a way he was only with children and his friends when they had a bad day. Maybe, she thought, maybe this could work.

 

No one said anything about Harry disappearing from London at the same time that Michael started holding Nick’s hand under the table at lunch, whispering quiet words into his ear that made his face light up. No one said anything, but everyone noticed. Henry even held an unofficial pub meeting on the topic of Heartbroken Harry Styles versus Nick In Love to discuss how to best handle the situation. Alexa and Pixie came back from the States after checking up on Harry saying that he was clearly in denial about Michael having anything to do with his sudden disappearance from Europe and his gallivanting with Kendall Jenner. They didn’t say a word of it to Nick, but all of their friends were concerned that the fragile equilibrium of their favourite dynamic duo had been shattered. And when Harry excused himself from joining Aimee and Ian’s wedding, they all thought: oh, this is bad.

 

Nick and Michael never got together together properly. Sure, they barely spent any time apart, and as far as anyone knew, they were exclusive. But Nick still always introduced him as "my friend Michael." Not boyfriend. And when the topic of moving in together, of building a durable future, was broached, they both avoided replying.

 

Aimee and Pixie cornered Nick about it one afternoon, not long after Pixie and George got engaged. "So, what are your plans exactly with Michael ?" they both asked. "He’s been around for ages and you haven’t freaked out yet. What about the next steps ?"

 

Nick shrugged. "We’re fine like this. We both agreed that this can only last for a short time. Michael … he’s great, really, and I like him very much. What we have, it’s easy. And yes, maybe we were in love at some point, but never enough that it mattered."

 

An emotionally mature Nick was a rare occurrence, so his response stunned both of them into silence. The topic of his relationship with Michael didn’t come back up again. And when Michael moved to Manchester, Nick and Michael separated with small smiles, lingering touches and promises to see each other again soon.

 

And so it was done, a chapter was closed. Daisy sent a text to Harry. _Nick and Michael are done. I thought you’d like to know._  He never replied, but three weeks later Emily walked into him half naked in the kitchen of Nick’s new place, making breakfast, a large suitcase parked in the hallway.

 

Their friends watched, once again as Nick and Harry became _Nick &Harry_. Always together, cracking jokes and dancing in the dark at parties. It seemed like they shone brighter than before. Like being separated for so long had only made the flame of their bond burn more intensely, blinding them from seeing anyone else around. They became careless, tangled together in front of almost strangers when Fifi and Jack had  Bake Off watch-along dinners; smiling too much and constantly touching, like keeping their hands off each-other hurt too much.

 

Aimee was colder to Harry, still hurt deep-down by his absence from her wedding and the way he monopolized Nick’s love, greedy and impatient, wanting him all for himself all the time without voicing it. Harry seemed to feel her disapproval and he started to avoid her. Long gone was their easy friendship of the early years.

 

"Why are you here, Harry ?" she ended up asking him. They were at Nick’s for a Sunday roast, everyone else in the lounge chatted loudly behind them. "What’s your plan with Nick, exactly? Do you want him to fall in love with you so that you can disappear again? Do you think he’s another one of your conquests, that you can flaunt around for a bit and abandon once you get bored?"

 

At her words, Harry turned bright red with anger. "Because you think Nick doesn’t do that, too ? Like he never toyed with my feelings when I was a starry eyed kid with the most embarrassing crush on him, back when we started? We’re both as bad as each other, that’s why it works. If I’m a fucking coward, then he is too. He ran away from me as much as I did and you know it. So I get it, he’s your friend first and I’ve been shit to you - and I’m sorry I have, I’m really sorry - but stop pretending that it doesn’t work both ways."

 

He had tears in his eyes and Aimee’s heart softened. They’re both so stubborn and stupid, she thought. They’ll just destroy each other if they’re not careful enough. She opened her arms to Harry and he folded in two to wrap himself around her.

 

"Oh Harry," she breathed in his hair, feeling him shake against her.

 

"Are we going to be alright, Aims?" He asked in a small voice, his face buried in the cook of her neck. She had no idea if he was talking about her or Nick, or both of them.

 

"I’m alright with you, babe. It’s okay. I’m just a bit shitty to people sometimes, too." She squeezed him as close to her as her pregnant belly allowed. "Just … be careful with Nick. Please."

 

Nick walked in at that moment. He did a double take when he saw them, Harry slowly crying in Aimee’s arms.

 

"Hm … Can I join?" He asked.

 

Harry laughed wetly. "Sure, c’mon."

 

Nick wrapped them all in his long arms. They stayed like that for a little bit longer before separating awkwardly to go back to the lounge without further words.

 

 _Harry told me he’s in love with me._  Nick texted Aimee a day later. _We’re giving it a real go this time._  She smiled at her phone. Idiots.

 

-

 

Then followed a few rocky months when Aimee spent a lot of time on the phone with Nick to reassure him that he was fine and he wasn’t going to screw everything up with Harry before she was finally able to watch them dance together under the fairy lights at Pixie’s wedding. In the night in Mallorca, it was still tentative, but their broad and easy smiles suggested the start of something great.

 

They’ll be fine, all their friends agreed. Maybe this could work forever after all.


End file.
